“Out-of-home” digital media networks are like private television channels run by companies, organizations and advertisers in locations such as shopping malls, retail chains, or franchise operations. Such networks are sometimes also referred to as location-based or narrow-cast networks, because unlike broadcast media, they are designed to appeal to the audience at or close to a specific location.
Location-based services typically refer to services that are able to determine and then leverage the location of a user. One of the best-known methods for determining location is via the US military satellite triangulation system known as the Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS radio receivers are able to receive different signals from specific GPC satellites, and then triangulate those signals to determine positional information. This is can then be used by an application such as mapping software, to show a user where they are currently located.
Another popular method of determining location is to use the cellular mobile phone infrastructure. Cellular mobile phone systems know the identity of the cell a handset is connecting from. Even though cell sizes vary, and therefore accuracy of such systems varies, the information can be of use to applications such as emergency services. However, cellular systems are not ideal for applications, which require seamless integration with all mobile handsets, as at present, there are many different standards, networks, handsets, operating systems, and each requires close cooperation for developers.
Mobile communications devices such as, but not limited to mobile phones are becoming more sophisticated every day. Many such devices are not only capable of providing voice communication, but also text, picture and video messaging.
Many mobile communication devices also have many of the features of a computer connected to the Internet. Whilst many people have access to services on the Internet via a mobile communications device, the reality is that devices designed for mobility tend to have smaller screens than desktop computers, televisions, and out-of-home screens. As a result, products and services are difficult to discover and/or access. Flipping open a phone, selecting a web browser, typing in a web site address, then clicking or searching for the specific information can be too complex for many consumers. It is known that users need to find their intended digital destination in the least number of steps (or clicks). At every step, some users abandon their mission. Some user interface experts have reported that up to 25% of users are lost for every click. In other words, data services should be ideally accessed within 3-4 clicks to ensure a reasonable user-base.
At the end of 2004, there were more than 1 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide. Many of these phones are capable of communication data as well as voice. Data can be in the form of an SMS message, a picture, or even multi-media—such as video and games. Mobile phones are personal devices and tend to be more trusted than many other computing devices. As a result, a mobile information society is developing. Personalized and localized services are believed to become increasingly more important.
“Virtual graffiti” applications such as tagandscan, that was described in www.newscientist.com on 17 Dec. 2003. Such applications let users of a mobile phone post a message to specific mobile phone cell. By logging on to website that lists the cells, users can view the messages in specific cells. Alternatively, applications on cell phones that are able to access cell information are able to retrieve messages on the cell phone. However, with “virtual graffiti” there is no visual indication that a message has been posted in a specific location without browsing an application either on the mobile communication device or a website. Furthermore, such an implementation either requires special software to be downloaded—something that is not necessarily possible on all mobile devices or requires tight integration between software, networks, and mobile communication devices to embed the application on the device. In the absence of standard application program interfaces (APIs) this strategy requires close cooperation of the cellular operators and handset manufacturers and operating system providers.
Bulletin Boards on the web are a popular way of posting messages. Likewise, web logs (“Blogs”), which contain periodic postings on a web page, have become popular for simple personal web publishing, such as individual diaries, or political campaigns. Blogs are typically chronological publications of personal thoughts and Web links. They are often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site. People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process. These systems tend to be centered around a person or a topic, but often lack a dimension of community due to failing to be location-centric.
Interactive billboards that communicate or detect mobile devices such as described by U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,861, require mobile devices to have wireless technologies such as Bluetooth or Infra Red (IR), as well as their regular wireless capabilities. This approach fails to appreciate that such technologies are often buried deep in the user interface of a mobile devices, making them difficult to access instantly. Also, these technologies are frequently implemented in non-standard ways, creating incompatibilities between the billboard and the mobile device. Further, with IR, the user needs to line-of-sight to align their device with the transceiver, which is not ideal in an outside environment.
Systems such as Hewlett-Packard's “Cooltown” have disclosed a location-aware architecture that can be created using URL's for addressing, physical URL beaconing and sensing of URL's for discovery, and localized web servers for directories. The Hewlett-Packard vision describes users receiving messages from beacons in a similar fashion to the interactive billboards. Hewlett-Packard also describe how users can “squirt” URL's from their mobile devices to activate printers or other devices. Their vision not only requires ubiquity of web-enabled mobile devices, it also requires users to access enchanting services easily and swiftly. The Cooltown system requires a web browser and display capability in the users mobile device to navigate within the Web page indicated by the URL broadcasted. In addition, the user gets exposed to URL's without knowing in advance whether or not the content information of the associated Web page is relevant to the user. As mentioned previously, creating data services that can be actioned within 3 clicks in such a scenario, is at the very least, challenging.
A number of companies have used digital billboards at a location such as a stadium or arena, to display SMS messages from audience members. As an example, fans were able to send encouragements by SMS to Athletes during the course of the Paris Saint-Denis World Athletic Championships held in Paris in August 2003. Spectators were able to send (premium rate) SMS text messages of encouragement to their favorite athletes, which were alternately displayed on two giants screen in the stadium. Designed to entertain audiences during a show, these applications do not support data for or from consumers at other locations, either physical (such as other arenas) or virtual (such as websites). Also, being event-centric, such applications are by default, one-off events, and therefore miss the opportunity to provide a time-lapse view of data sent to the same location over time which can add an interesting and social dimension to the data.
Companies have developed applications using a single screen or bank of screens in a single location such as a lobby, able to respond to email, Instant Messages (IM) or SMS messages. This type of application provides information or entertainment for visitors or staff. These applications do not teach the value of networking a plurality of locations, each with at least one Internet-connected screen and each Internet-connected screen being independently addressable, with at least one central website, able to view and/or create content for any or all locations, which results in a truly multi-model and fully heterogeneous, duplex communication and social information infrastructure.
The present invention addresses these and other shortcomings by providing a system that supports a plurality of independently addressable Internet-connected screens, each able to display content sent via mobile devices or the Internet. The display of the content depends on policies set by the system administrator. Consequently, content sent to the system can be read at specific locations, as well as being accessed via the web and/or mobile devices. Having content available and displayable at a location, makes it more likely to be discovered and relevant to users at those locations without requiring special beacons or additional detection devices or additional software on the users' mobile devices. The act of engaging with the content can be facilitated by all mobile devices that can make voice calls to use interactive voice response (IVR) systems or make data calls for example but not limited to using SMS, using a device's keypad.
With such a system, messages and/or content, especially those with a community, local, social or political context, can be posted for public consumption in locations where they might have most relevance.